Sixty: A Diary of My Sixty-First Year: The Beginning of the End, or the End of the Beginning?

Mr Brown is an accomplished Canadian journalist, who undertook the titled project. I'm going to be brief. What is best in this book is his writing. He is a good wordsmith. His sentences are easy on the ears(or eyes?). Many of the poems he offers are welcome and apropos, especially those of Philip Larkin, to whose work I now realize I must give more attention. The memoir succeeds at conveying a sense of the changes that attend aging -- often supplemented by the author's medical researches ("My heart changes too. My aging heart has a harder time speeding up than it did...The walls of my arteries are thicker and less flexible, while the space within the arteries has expanded slightly as well. As a result they can't relax as well while the show more heart pumps, which in turn leads to increased blood pressure.)

The enduring voice in this book is of a man in late middle age trying to come to terms with what is declining, but failing in his task. He will not go gentle into that good night, if only because he is busy banging his head at his misfortune. He is beset with regret at goals not accomplished, honors not won, self-esteem not sufficiently gratified. One commiserates with him, for his is not the wisdom devoutly to be wished at 60. Might he be a little further along in his personal evolution at this point? Surely I am being judgmental. We should respect his honesty: he admits his shortcomings openly before us. And yet there is something essentially immature, I think, in this account. Much could be redeemed by cultivating one indispensable attitude: gratitude. I struggle to find the gratitude for all life has given him at 60 that suffuses the work of Paul Kalanithi (When Breath Becomes Air), whose life came to a premature end at 37. I know a book to recommend to Mr. Brown. show less

I'm turning sixty this year, and my husband did so last month, and all my old friends either just have or are just about to, so how could I pass up this little memoir?

Ian Brown decides to keep a journal of the year he turns sixty and that's this book. He's balding and he tires more easily and he worries about whether he can still write and he knows he's slowing down; Brown shares all the aches and pains of his new life as an old man, and interweaves the information he's learned from the thorough research he's done about the changes our bodies undergo as we age.

You will want to read it, too, if you are approaching this pivotal age yourself or you are on the other side of it.* It's good preparation. It's good fun, too.

*One small show more footnote: It's written by a man and it's from a man's point of view and most of the facts are about men at sixty. Just know that going in. show less

When I read the preview for this book, I thought I would like it. I am slightly older then the author and was curious about his experiences and perspectives given that we are both in our 60s. To be honest, the book was rather depressing to me. I did not need to know that our best days are behind us, women no longer find us attractive and that friends and people we know in our age group die or suffer from illness or other injuries. We also begin to lose our memory and our judgment is not as sharp as it used to be. This book may be an interesting read for those who are in their late 40s and 50s as they will be able to see what their imminent future holds.

I can't say that I learned anything new from reading this book – – maybe that show more was not the author's intention. It certainly wasn't a book that uplifted my spirits – – that's for sure. show less